A faithful friend
is an elixir of life,
a sturdy shelter and a treasure.
We all know from our experience
that one of the great blessings in life is friendship. We value our friends
deeply. We are very aware that our lives would be the poorer without them.
One
of the books of the Old Testament, from which we don’t often read, the Book of
Sirach, has some very striking things to say about friendship. It was written
about one hundred and eighty years before the birth of Jesus. It is clearly
written by someone who knew the value of friendship in his own life. At one
point, the author says the following about friendship: ‘a faithful friend is a sturdy shelter: whoever has found one has found
a treasure. There is nothing so precious as a faithful friend, and no scales
can measure their excellence. A faithful friend is an elixir of life; and those
who fear the Lord will find one’. The image of a faithful friend as a
sturdy shelter, as a treasure, rings true to all our experience.
It
is difficult to say how or why friendships happen. There was a very well known
book written by Norman Vincent Peale, ‘How to make friends and influence
people’. However, there is only so much any of us can do to make a friendship
happen, because, as we know, a friendship has to be mutual. I may want to be
someone’s friend, but unless that person wants to be my friend, the friendship
won’t come to pass. Friendships happen when two people chose each other as
friends. If I chose someone as a friend, I need that person to chose me as
their friend for the friendship to come to pass.
Choice
is at the heart of friendship, the choice of two people for each other. One of
the more painful experiences of life is when the choice I make to befriend
someone is not reciprocated by that person.
-MMM-
